


Jump of Fate

by orphan_account



Series: Prompts [2]
Category: IT (2017)
Genre: Just Soulmate Things(tm), M/M, Mentions of Character Death, Reunion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-15
Updated: 2019-01-15
Packaged: 2019-10-10 11:56:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17425436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: The Eddie standing by him now was far from the Eddie which Richie had known in his youth. He’d traded out the tiny colourful shorts with polo t-shirts for beige khaki pants and soft looking sweaters. His hair had grown out to curl at the ends, his skin had tanned and there wasn’t a single fannypack in sight. He’d shot up, too, not as much as Richie for sure, but Eddie seemed to own his body with a confidence that Richie had never had in himself.[Prompt: 45: do you trust me? + 46: can i kiss you right now? ]





	Jump of Fate

Somehow the drop hadn’t seemed quite so high in childhood, Richie marveled to himself as he stared down off the edge of Quarry. It had been three years since Richie had tossed what little worldly possessions he had into the back of his shitty pick-up truck, bid farewell to his parents and Mike, and driven off to UCLA with no intent of ever looking back. 

Richie had driven to the Quarry the second he’d gotten into Derry, not even bothering to drop his stuff off at home. He couldn’t explain even to himself why he’d suddenly gotten overwhelmed by the urge to come home. He just knew he’d woken up yesterday morning and called his parents to say he was coming home for spring break. 

“Well, are you just going to stare down and are you going to jump?” A familiar voice- oh, all too familiar, it brought on the best kind of ache in Richie’s chest- called from behind him. Richie jumped and nearly ended up falling off the cliff. 

Eddie Kaspbrak slapped a hand over his mouth and cackled as he watched Richie attempt to regain his footing. The Eddie standing by him now was far from the Eddie which Richie had known in his youth. He’d traded out the tiny colourful shorts with polo t-shirts for beige khaki pants and soft looking sweaters. His hair had grown out to curl at the ends, his skin had tanned and there wasn’t a single fannypack in sight. He’d shot up, too, not as much as Richie for sure, but Eddie seemed to own his body with a confidence that Richie had never had in himself.

He was, in short, more beautiful than ever and it made Richie’s chest tight with something he hadn’t been able to describe at eleven years old but maybe he knew what it was now. 

“Well, Eddie  _fucking_ Kaspbrak, how the hell are you?” Richie cried, ignoring his emotion like he’d always done best. “It’s been what? Six years?”

“Seven.” Eddie corrected, grinning from ear to ear. Richie jumped away from the cliffs edge and tossed his arms around Eddie. As Eddie fell forward to hold him close, Richie’s mind chased down the road of how little seven years can change a heart. He hadn’t thought of it in a good four years, but he suddenly vividly remembered feeling like he was dying when Eddie told him that his mother was moving him away. It had, truthfully, been a long time coming. Sonia Kaspbrak had been trying to pull Eddie away since That Summer and she’d finally done it. Richie’s entire chest had felt like it was going to cave in when Eddie told them- them, at the point, being just Mike, Stan and Richie himself. 

When Richie had hugged Eddie goodbye seven years earlier, they’d been thirteen and Eddie’s hair had smelled like blueberries and he’d been so much shorter than Richie- who’d started hitting his growth spurts the summer before high school, making him an unhappy giant for a long time before anybody caught up- he’d had to stand up on his tip-toes just to rest his chin on Richie’s shoulder in a quick, thirty second embrace.

Now, at nearly twenty-one years old, Eddie’s hair smelled like that mornings rain and Richie could comfortably rest his chin on top of Eddie’s curls. And this hug lingered much longer than thirty seconds. It lingered long enough that Richie was forced to pander if it was possible to really have missed somebody so much, when you hadn’t thought of them in at least five years?

Richie didn’t pander on that very long, because, of course, he already knew the answer. 

“So?” Eddie finally pulled back, and if he was staring up at Richie’s with beautiful, all too familiar, teary eyes then neither of them chose to speak of it just then. “You gonna jump or what?” 

“Jump?” Richie laughed breathlessly. “No. Come on, Eds, I’m not twelve years old anymore.”

A small look of confusion flashed over Eddie’s face at the nickname, as though he was trying to refind his footing before he grinned mischievously. “ **Do you trust me?”**

And oh, hell, Richie hadn’t seen him in close to a decade but God help him, he did. He had no true reason to, he didn’t even have a real reason to connect this  _man_ with his childhood friend but this twinge of  _something_ was tugging at Richie’s heartstrings and he couldn’t deny that Richie’s superstitious ass had never believed in coincidences. So, instead of trying to pull apart the millions of contradicting thoughts in his head, Richie just cleared his throat and pushed out a “Yes.” 

Eddie’s face brightened and he grabbed hold of Richie’s hand and broke into a stuntering run towards the cliff. Richie momentarily panicked, because it certainly seemed like Eddie Kaspbrak was trying to kill him, but then Eddie grinned at him over his shoulder as he jumped and Richie forgot to be nervous. As he broke the surface, Richie was marveling at how seven years earlier, it would’ve been himself taking an terrified Eddie over the cliffs edge. 

Richie surfaced and Eddie was already laughing. The other man swam forward and pushed Richie’s dripping curls from his face. “Your hair has always been ridiculous, you know that, right?” 

“What are you doing here?” Richie spit out the question that must have been in the back of his mind this whole time, continuously pushed away by other thoughts of Eddie, but still sitting there. Eddie face contoured awkwardly, lips twitching to the side slightly, and that was a face Richie knew well. It was Eddie’s thinking of a lie because Eddie Kaspbrak was a lot of thing but a good liar had never been one of them. “And don’t lie. I know you want to, but i’ll know you are.” Eddie clenched his jaw for a moment, looking ready to argue with him, before he let out a breath and rolled his eyes. “My mom had a stroke last week. She died.”

“Oh, man, Eddie, I-” Richie bit down on his tongue, a certain bad habit he’d picked up in high school as a way to slow his mouth down so his brain could catch up. Did he apologize? He didn’t know anything about Eddie’s life for the last decade, but he could remember many things about Sonia Kaspbrak and her ways. The way she’d messed up her son. Acting as though he was so sick and delicate to point where everybody- Eddie himself- believed it. He remembered he’d never seen Eddie so  _hurt_ as the day he found out his medication was all fake, just a means of controlling him.

Looking at Eddie now, he didn’t look like any sort of sick little boy, and didn’t seem to be carrying around any medications or fake inhalers. It was entirely possible that Eddie and Mrs Kaspbrak had patched up their relationship and managed to move on from what she’d done to him. On the other  hand, Eddie certainly didn’t seem particularly sad, either. 

“Don’t apologize,” Eddie jumped in before Richie could even start to make a coherent thought out of his racing thoughts. “I haven’t talked to my mother in almost three years. I got into NYU and left her to deal with her own issues. She was… pretty fucking terrible.”

“Yeah, I remember,” Richie said, forcing back what would easily be a WAY too inappropriate Your Mom joke. Eddie raised his brow as though he could tell. 

“Her funeral started about… two hours ago,” Eddie said. “I was on my way there, I really was, but somehow, I just started driving here instead. So, I guess I don’t know what I’m doing here, in truth. Avoiding my past? Embracing it? Both? I don’t know.” 

“I don’t know why I’m here, either,” Richie told him, momentarily glancing up at the too clear spring sky. He hadn’t felt the chill of the water and he certainly hadn’t felt him reaching out and pressing his hands onto Eddie’s hips. Eddie had swam closer to him, and they were practically nose to nose now. “I just woke up yesterday and I knew… that I needed to come home.”

Home. Richie hadn’t thought of Derry as home in a long, long time. Not since the end of junior year when Stan had left and Richie had fully faced the brutality of this town alone. The words coming from his mouth surprised him but seemed to surprise Eddie more.

“I would’ve had to be making my wrong turn to get to Derry from New York instead of my mom’s funeral around then,” Eddie was whispering now but he and Richie were close enough that it was as though he was speaking at full volume anyway. “Richie… I don’t believe in like… I don’t know… Is it stupid to think…”

“I had the biggest crush on you, Eddie Spaghetti.” Eddie might have been the one who jumped from the cliff that afternoon, but Richie was still the one who took the big plunge. “Like, forever. Before I know I even liked boys, I knew I liked you.” 

Eddie’s breathing was heavy against his face and his eyelashes fluttered against his cheek. “Can I kiss you right now?” 

“You fucking better, Edward Spaghed-” 

Richie had never enjoyed being shut up more. 


End file.
